An Awe-Inspiring Renovation At Yale Gallery

View of American paintings and sculpture galleries. (Elizabeth Felicella )

December 09, 2012|By SUSAN DUNNE, sdunne@courant.com

The Yale University Art Gallery held a press walk-through Tuesday of its newly renovated and expanded exhibition spaces. Because of the size of the renovation, by necessity, it was a speedy walk-through, not stopping for long in any one gallery. The shortness of the overview emphasized one inescapable fact: This museum, always excellent, is now so vast and multifaceted that nobody should walk through it that quickly.

Let that serve as a notice. Those who want to see all the New Haven gallery has now — the new spaces open to the public on Wednesday, Dec. 12 — should schedule not one, but at least two and if possible three days to appreciate everything on exhibit. This includes longtime favorite artworks and works that haven't seen seen in public in decades or, in many cases, ever.

Because how can a person see a 19th-century Indian carved wooden archway, which has been turned into a doorway leading to a gallery, and not stop and admire not just the craftsmanship but also the architectural flourish, which extends to the ceiling murals directly behind it? How can one rush past five Cézannes in a row, on view together for the first time, surrounded by Gauguins, Seurats and Van Gogh's "The Night Cafe" (which curator Lawrence Kanter calls "the painting you get off the highway for")?

How can anyone speed through the "Société Anonyme: Modernism for America" exhibit — with work by Klee, Brancusi, Kandinsky, Arp, Miro, Picabia, Duchamp and others — filling up spacious fourth-floor gallery spaces that, before the renovation, did not exist? It will take a little while just to admire the deep mulberry walls in a room dedicated to European art and the lighting setup on the ceiling, which beautifully set off the museum's collection of medieval Italian gold-ground paintings. It also will take a while to appreciate the fun juxtaposition of old stone columns in front of a modern Sol LeWitt creation.

You can't speed past them. You have to give each of them lots of time. And seeing as admission is always free to all, what better use could a person make of a day in New Haven?

These and thousands of other artworks are laid out in unprecedented distinction and volume, and have been regrouped geographically and historically. However, it isn't just the brand-new galleries and reinstallation of the artworks that are being revealed to the public this week, but also the work of Ennead Architects.

Those walls, that doorway and countless other features — including a glass elevator, restored window vistas of the Yale campus, a gorgeous ironwork railing on an elliptical staircase and many respectful uses of features already in existence, such as the majestic, restored Yellin Gates — are the work of the New York firm, whose architects began envisioning this overhaul of the museum's interior space 18 years ago.

Ennead's goal was not just expansion of the museum's space, bringing it from 44,000 square feet to 69,000 square feet. (More important, as Jill Westgard, deputy director of museum resources and stewardship puts it, "the square footage is not as significant as usable space.") The goal also is to integrate the museum's contiguous buildings into a more easily flowing viewing experience, to restore the open plan, and to correct longstanding problems in the museum's infrastructure. Or, as museum director Jock Reynolds joked, "280 cumulative years of deferred maintenance have been corrected."

The museum is made up of the Louis Kahn building, constructed in 1953, the Old Yale Art Gallery, designed by Edgerton Swartwout in 1928, and the 1866 Street Hall, designed by Peter Bonnett Wight. Renovations and reinstallation in the Kahn cost $44 million, and in the Old Gallery and Street Hall, $91 million.

Architect Duncan Hazard, who with Richard Olcott oversaw the renovations, says the work on the upper floors of the Kahn wing is the most conceptually innovative in the project. "We took off a big skylight on the third floor and built a new floor, and put the skylight on the top of it." The fourth floor also features an outdoor sculpture garden.

He adds, "Before, the top level of Kahn was isolated. Visitorship was low. Now it's connected [to the rest of the museum] by a staircase. ... You can make a total loop through the museum."

However, Hazard's favorite spot in the museum is the American painting and sculpture gallery spaces, which have been "returned to their original glory" after being used for years as studios, classrooms and lecture halls. They are now are painted a muted bluish-green and house pre-1900 artworks.